'My winners are ahead of my losers and that’s what business is about': Nat Rothschild on money, modesty and feeling a bit Swiss

Appy man: Nat Rothschild says some of the things said about him are “just preposterous” (Picture: Adrian Lourie) Adrian Lourie

When they were eight years old, Nat Rothschild and George Osborne built a den behind the music block at Colet Court, their prep school, from discarded wooden panels, fence sticks and branches lugged from the towpath that ran between the school’s boundary and the Thames. They agreed, as they settled on upturned boxes and swapped Panini football stickers, that it was the best hideout in the world.

The pair, who sat side-by-side in class, were separated at 13 when Osborne graduated to St Paul’s and Rothschild was sent to Eton in the footsteps of his father, Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild. They were reunited at Oxford, where both were members of the Bullingdon Club.

But in 2008, after 30 years of friendship, they had a spectacular falling-out after an evening aboard the yacht of Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, in Corfu. Osborne gossiped to journalists that Peter Mandelson had been there too, and had allegedly “poured poison” into his ear about Gordon Brown (then Prime Minister). Rothschild was furious at this “breach of privacy” and wrote to The Times accusing Osborne of trying to solicit from Deripaska a £50,000 donation for the Conservatives (something Osborne denies).

So I’m surprised when Rothschild, 43, says: “We are on very good terms now,” and that he has “definite” plans to invite Osborne to dinner. “The moment they go into opposition,” he says, “he’ll be the first person I invite round.” He refuses to call it a “fall-out”, making light of the spat that nearly cost Osborne his political career. “I last saw him at [PR] Matthew Freud’s 50th,” he says, “And I see him every year in Davos. He was very clever [at school], very academic. I have vivid memories of the den.”

Today his hideout is a Bond villain’s lair tucked behind metal gates in Battersea. When I arrive he’s standing, hands in pockets, behind an expanse of glass, his black German shepherd baying and skittering about the floor. There’s an absence about him — he doesn’t apologise when his dog paws me with mud, or shake hands or take my coat.

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His place is vast and covered with art — Damien Hirsts, photographs of topless girls, panels of cleavage, Julian Opie pole dancers — but he makes a point of saying he’s renting — “squatting” — and that home is Klosters, Switzerland. He used to have houses all over the world, he says, but “I have far fewer than I used to”.

“I’m only in London to finish my degree,” he explains, an MSc in Addiction Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry. He gives me a copy of his thesis “to keep”. Has he struggled with addiction? “No. A lot of my family members going back generations have had problems — more on the mental health side, but there’s a lot of overlap.” Among them, his cousin Raphael de Rothschild, who died of a heroin overdose on a New York pavement at 23, and his uncle Amschel, who hanged himself in a Paris hotel room in 1996. He adds that his girlfriend is a clinical psychologist, but “recoils at being written about”.

We’re here to talk about Maaxi, the app that he’s launching with Gabi Campo, an Israeli former cyber intelligence officer. It’s a brilliant idea, allowing Londoners to share black taxis with up to five strangers on the same route, a computer calculating the cost between them. Rothschild believes it will “save the taxi industry”.

“It fills a huge gap in the market place. It has enormous social and environmental benefits [and] will change the way Londoners move around.” It’s “cheaper to the consumer over a mile and a half” than the bus, and “a third of the price of Uber. Intellectually it should work”. He describes it as a “sophisticated” version of cab sharing in Moscow or Jamaica, “where they put you on the roof when the car has filled up”. Can it be exported to other cities? “Yes, but that’s not our ambition. Our ambition is the London market – a $7bn market.”

Rothschild’s personal wealth is estimated at £523million, much of it self-made, and he is ranked 192nd on The Sunday Times rich list — above both his father (216th) and relatives Sir Evelyn and Lady Rothschild (226th). He gives around £1million a year to charity.

He has, of course, plenty of experience building companies — not all successful. He denies Bumi, the Indonesian mining company he co-founded with £1.2billion of City money, has tarnished his reputation. It lost two-thirds of its value after allegations of financial irregularities in its Indonesian sphere of activities, and Rothschild now calls the venture “a mistake”.

“[In] business you win some, you lose some. I still own 18 per cent of the company.” He blames the losses on a plunge in coal prices, adding: “There are still investors who have chosen to ride the cycle.”

He prefers to concentrate on “successes” — “I raised $2.2 billion for [the oil company] Genel,” he says. “Without blowing my trumpet, I was chairman of one of the biggest public companies in France by the time I was 28.” He was also a partner at Atticus, which in 2007 was one of the world’s largest hedge funds with $20 billion under management.

“I’ve made quite a lot of money and I’ve lost quite a lot of money. But my winners are ahead of my losers and that’s what business is about. I’ve been on the boards of some of the world’s biggest companies. I don’t want to sound like an arrogant f****r, but I’ve got hundreds of investments.”

Rothschild is at greatest ease talking about money. Ask about his personal life, and it’s like prodding an infected tooth. Of growing up in the great banking family, he says: “Well I went to boarding school, so I grew up there.”

When questioned about his early twenties in New York — where he was said to have hosted drug-fuelled parties — and his tempestuous three-year marriage to model Annabelle Nielson, he fixes me with grey eyes. “I find it bizarre that I’m still linked with someone who I was involved with literally 20 years ago.”

Attracting models, he admits, “wasn’t very difficult”. He quickly becomes defensive: “Some of the things said about me are fiction.” The story he prefers is: “I went to university, got a 2:1, started a hedge fund, built it into one of the top five in the world.” He says things “a few ex-models say about me [are] just preposterous”.

He won’t talk about being a Rothschild — “boring” — and says that his name makes no difference. “You get treated differently if you are successful.”

He says he’s “perfectly happy to admit” that he doesn’t get on with his father. “Essentially we’re in competition. Business is a big thing for him and for me.” Do they gather at Christmas? “No, because we are a family of Jewish origin.” Does he send his father birthday cards? “I did actually send him a birthday card this year.”

He is “closest” to his mother, Serena Mary Dunn, a Canadian. It says something of this allegiance that he carries a Canadian passport. “I’m not a British citizen. I think of myself as Swiss — ultimately I will get Swiss citizenship.”

He shares his mother’s love of horses — “we have about a hundred” — and leaps up to show me a photograph of “a race I won, the King Edward VII.”

Does he want children? “That’s certainly high on my list of things to do.”

He doesn’t gamble or smoke, and drinks only “occasionally”. He doesn’t read, or go to the cinema, but is “passionate” about skiing. “I’m modest, you can tell, but the one thing I’m going to be immodest about is that I’m a very good skier.”

Also: “I really like football.” He supports Chelsea, owned by his friend Roman Abramovich. “Not a close friend. He wouldn’t mind me saying that I’ve managed money for him in the past.”

He’s careful about his inner circle — “If people are amoral, I certainly have no interest in being friends with them.”

Was he friends with Saif Gaddafi? “Yes, but everyone thought he was credible. Howard Davis, David Khalili, Lord Alliance, Tony Blair.” He pauses. “[And] little old Nat Rothschild thought he was credible too.”